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The GECOM Gambit
It would appear that in the middle of September, Dr Roger Luncheon, Head of the Presidential Secretariat, fired off a missive to several budget agencies – which included GECOM – directing them to submit their advertisements to the government’s controversial new procurement website via GINA. In the instance of GECOM, the letter exempted those advertisements/notices “associated with discharging GECOM’s constitutional and legal responsibilities (Orders, Notices, Acts and Amendments)”
A month later when the directive to GECOM was brought to the attention of the media, a firestorm broke out over what was perceived to be an effort to curb the independence of that institution. In view of the fact that with elections constitutionally due within a year – making a voter registration drive imminent – it was felt that the necessary voter education exercise would be crippled if it were to be funnelled only through the internet. Guyana, after all, is hardly saturated with computers, much less internet-ready ones.
On Wednesday, Dr Luncheon lashed out against those that expressed concerns over the implications of the directive – including GECOM commissioners. Dubbing them “a bunch of ill informed wicked people”, he claimed that he did not need “a lesson from (Dr Steve) Surujbally about the need for a wider dissemination of voter education material than the procurement site could provide. He questioned the motives of those who could interpret his directive as they did: all he wanted “was to ensure coherence that procurement had migrated to the website.”
We believe that Dr Luncheon has misapprehended the gravamen of the concerns precipitated by his intervention. As much as, if not more than any other Guyanese, Dr Luncheon should appreciate that the independence of our Elections Commission is not an academic issue. The subversion of our political system, and the destruction of our country, began most insidiously in 1967 when the Elections Commission was manoeuvred to facilitate the rigging of the general elections scheduled for the following year.
Matters followed their inevitable course as one after another subversion followed that fateful Rubicon. It was not for nothing that the phrase that rallied all Guyanese in the ensuing decades-long struggle against the resultant dictatorship was the demand for “free and fair elections”. And the demand was given concrete reality with the formation of what was explicitly promulgated as an “independent Elections Commission” through the intervention of President Carter. Dr Luncheon should therefore appreciate, and even celebrate the vociferous expressions of concern voiced by our citizenry.
Walter Lippmann, the doyen of American journalism – who was in the forefront of that country’s struggle to keep the flag of liberty flying in the face of encroaching authoritarianism – once noted that democracy can only be secured when ordinary citizens have imbibed a “well-nigh reflexive” rejection of high handedness from official sources. Maybe democracy is at long last taking root in Guyana.
The citizens, after all, are aware that Dr Luncheon’s directive (does he have the authority to issue such directives?) was not issued in a vacuum. The procurement website is considered by many to be a vindictive response by the government to the critique of some of its policies and actions by the media. By denying them revenues from government ads, it is hoped that they will either fall into line or collapse. But Dr Luncheon’s avowal that GECOM could continue placing voter education ads in the media is additionally disingenuous.
That media is already owed some $16 million from the recent (aborted) local government exercise by GECOM because the government has queried that expenditure. Citizens – and GECOM- should be forgiven if they are sceptical of the most recent move by the government: the national poet Martin Carter has educated them of the propensity of the mouth to be muzzled by the hand that feeds it.
And it is to this unfortunate situation that citizens should now direct their attention: GECOM will always be susceptible to manipulation by the government while it remains a budget agency. We have alluded in the past to Mr Burnham’s aphorism that there are many ways to skin a cat.
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